So Good, So Right
by ActionAimz
Summary: This expands on Jason’s time protecting Courtney as she struggles with her inner thoughts and attraction to him.


So Good, So Right  
  
A Short Story  
  
Rated: Somewhere close to PG-13  
  
Premise: This expands on Jason's time protecting Courtney as she struggles with her inner thoughts and attraction to him.  
  
Feedback: If you would be so kind. I would love it. :D  
  
++++  
  
Courtney walked into her empty apartment and cursed her smile, the warmth that swept through her body, the throbbing, the longing, and the feelings that she felt for him. For the man that was not her husband.  
  
She never felt like *this* before.  
  
He offered to stay tonight, again. He would sleep on her couch of course, all night and get up the next morning and share breakfast and coffee with her. The way he did many times. Her hands would tremble a little as she buttered the toast. He would never eat or talk much -- just listen to her as she rambled on about anything. And she would look at the stubble gracing his strong, lean face, and hold herself back from offering to let him shower and shave. He would turn her down anyway. Maybe being naked in her shower was too much. *For both of them.*  
  
She would get up for water in the middle of the night and creep past him. And she always got up for water. The summer nights had been too hot for shirts and jeans. She had to remind him of the heat a few times before going to bed.  
  
"But it's 80 degrees tonight Jason. Hot and humid. And there's no air conditioning out here, just in the bedroom." She would blush. "I mean, uh." She would have to pause and exhale and fight putting her hand to her forehead. She was tired of stumbling over her words when she spoke to him like a giddy schoolgirl with a crush. He would just smirk and tell her to go to bed.  
  
Then once, on her nightly quest to quench her thirst, she saw him shirtless. Him there in her living room with a sheet haphazardly covering his body and one bare leg dangling over the edge. He tempted her in slumber on her lumpy secondhand sofa. His legs spilled over and he competed with Rosie for the little bit of space. She would try to shoe her away without waking him. Rosie and Jason, her protectors.  
  
She blushed the next morning when he commented on how he heard her restless in the bedroom. He asked if she got very much sleep at all. She apologized then wondered how long he was awake. Was he thinking about her like she was thinking about him? Did she give him sleepless nights and a restless body? Was he really awake, secretly, when she watched him flat-backed and bare- chested on her sofa . . .when her eyes followed the rise and fall of his chest for more minutes than she dared to admit?  
  
She shrugged him off tonight. No it's okay. She would be okay staying by herself. One night without him so close. Without him in the very next room shirtless and serene with thin cotton just barely covering the curve of his groin. Then she would maybe dream of her husband and not him. She had to stop dreaming of him; she loved AJ. *Damn you Jason.*  
  
"Hey girl ya hungry?" She poured dog food into a stainless steel bowl and filled another with water, standing back as her lab lapped it up. She wondered if Rosie missed the mansion and the dozens of rooms and acres of land to roam. She had to admit that she wouldn't balk at going back there. She would avoid the crazy Quartermaines and claim the east wing as hers. Only hers and AJ's of course. But there was no going back and no making up for past mistakes. You have to live with your choices. And sometimes you pay for them - dearly.  
  
Besides, this apartment felt more like home anyway. More of what she was accustomed to. Her mother was always on the move. Courtney had dozens of apartment addresses and half a dozen school districts in her past. She would carry addresses of her former residences in her wallet so she could remember them all for job applications.  
  
"David Letterman, Jay Leno, Nightline." She flipped through the channels. Letterman always helped her sleep. He was her nighttime storyteller. When she was a kid, Oprah was like a favorite aunt sharing advice. Judge Wapner was like an uncle, wrapping his gavel and telling her to go do her homework. Some lady on PBS taught her how to cook.  
  
She was raised by TV people, because her mom was in a short skirt and black stilettos busy shelling out free drinks at the Taj Mahal, all to support her baby girl. She learned to secure all five deadbolts and a chain lock in record time when it got past 10 p.m. and mom still wasn't home. She learned not to answer the phone unless it was mom with a special ring. She learned to close her door and put on her earphones when mom came home with a lover - her new Uncle So and So. She learned to be alone.  
  
And she needed to be alone tonight and not think about him - to close her eyes and think about AJ instead. AJ. If he would come back soon then maybe she would realize how much she missed him, eventually, finally. She would miss him when he came back no doubt.  
  
Now she missed Jason on her couch.  
  
She sighed then laughed at one of Letterman's jokes about Oprah being once married to Dr. Phil. What would Oprah say about her stripping? She chuckled wondering. "Don't do it girl. He is not worth it." Or would that be Dr. Phil dispensing that advice. She laughed out loud heartily. Rosie lifted her head to look at her, raising her eyes in confusion. She guessed it had been awhile since her dog heard her laugh.  
  
"It's okay Rosie, come sit by me." She patted her hand on the sofa and Rosie jumped up, licking her before settling back.  
  
The way she settled back into Jason at the Oasis.  
  
The only Oasis memories that she dared to store in her brain where the two times that their bodies touch. *The only time their bodies would touch?*  
  
As Daisy she would shut everyone out except for him. Maybe she danced just for him. She couldn't ignore him after all. He made her angry. She needed to hide from the world, escape from herself and he was always there as a reminder of her own desperate reality. She carried the lewd jeers and taunts from drunken men in her head and he must have too as he followed her two bus rides home, night after night. A constant reminder, he wouldn't let her leave that place behind. His job was to protect her. And now the Oasis was ashes and he was still protecting her. And still making her shut everyone else out except for him.  
  
But now she needed him to know that she was not Daisy. She wanted him to know Courtney. Courtney was not Daisy.  
  
Courtney was a married woman.  
  
It wasn't good. It wasn't right.  
  
++++  
  
Must she long for him even when he wasn't there? Courtney tossed in her bed. Her sheets were moist from her own perspiration in mid October. She could feel his chest at her back still. His arm around her, lifting and carrying her. His clean, soapy scent. His breath on her skin.  
  
"You've got to be kidding me," she said, dangling hard steel between her thumb and finger as if it were toxic. This was not the solution to her stalker problem. "I can't use this."  
  
"Yes you can. Only if you need to. Now hold your arms straight out in front of you." She had felt him again then - his chest against her back, guiding her arms, teaching her how to aim and shoot. So this is what he did best -- the only thing he knew, according to A.J.  
  
A killer, maybe. But cold-blooded, hardly  
  
Not even when his blue eyes turned gray like angry thunderclouds as he pummeled Coleman. His eyes changed again for her in the rain. Eyes that were accused of being cold and dead seemed to light her on fire. And she needed to cool it now.  
  
He was a monkey wrench. And she was twisted into knots in her bed.  
  
Thinking . . . about the kiss in the rain.  
  
++++  
  
It would be a simple "thank you" dinner. No it wasn't a date.  
  
It had been awhile since she had seen him. There was no reason to anymore. It was not like she would go to Sonny's and *accidentally* try to bump into him. Or throw herself into his arms again, sobbing like a baby about how A.J. had betrayed her. Or let Carly convince her that there was something between them. They were friends, casual acquaintances, nearly strangers. *Eventhough he saw her naked*. From her Daisy outfit to Cinderella.  
  
*Oh God.* There was nothing to hide and nothing to be ashamed of. She told herself that repeatedly. Then cursed as she kept putting the wrong ingredients in her chocolate chip cookie dough. She had to start over, twice. Damn butterflies in her stomach. This was crazy.  
  
Her hands did not really stop shaking and she sat on them so he wouldn't see. It was not polite not to look someone in the eye when they spoke to you. But his gaze made her tingle in the pit of her stomach, shudder almost, and she wanted to look away. But she couldn't look away because he was mesmerizing. The candlelight was too perfect, cutting across his chiseled featuring and dancing in his sapphire eyes, making them sparkle like bright blue stars in the night. His voice was like soft music making small talk. Then his touch.  
  
The veggie pate and red wine became a part of his shirt. His mouth was a part of hers, searching and exploring what was forbidden. He didn't want to stop, neither did she. Not when it felt this good. Not when it felt so right.  
  
He was the only man that made her fly, that ravished her with such a gentle intensity. He was potent, magnetic. His chest moved over her, caressing her breasts, her stomach, her knees. He explored her with lean fingers that were strong but shockingly tender. She trembled against his lips that met her neck, her nipples, her shin, her toes. He discovered uncharted territories on her body and awakened them for the first time. He seemed to worship her.  
  
Then he found the spot that pleased her the most. No man's lips had ever been there and she thought she would lose her mind. He had to tell her to relax, several times. He wanted her to be sure. And she was. Nothing was ever so clear.  
  
He took the time to please her, to ask her what she wanted. And the pleasure was pure and explosive. It was no longer a physical pleasure for she was no longer in her body and he filled her heart and warmed her soul. She no longer felt ashamed. She was free.  
  
And she felt no coldness from him, no menacing killer aura, no empty heart. Just the sensation of him inside her, his strength surrounding her, and his warm breath on her face as he whispered her name in-between moans of pleasure.  
  
She never knew it could be like this, and she never wanted to be alone again.  
  
Because she felt no coldness. Only love honest and true.  
  
It felt so good. It felt so right. 


End file.
